Strategy to curb child labour stressed

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BIRATNAGAR, Feb 27 – Participants at the fifth consultative meeting organized by International Labour Organisation (ILO) International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) stressed on the need to formulate multi-pronged strategy to address the problem of child labour in the country.

The meeting reached to a consensus that the local bodies should allocate a certain percentage of their annual budget for the development of the children in the area and for the establishment of child labour coordination committee at the District Development Committee (DDC) and VDC level.

The two-day meeting participated by over 25 representatives from the district authorities of eastern development region, Non-Government Organizations and trade unions, which ended in Biratnagar today was organized by IPEC with the objective of formulating the Time Bound Programme (TBP) to combat the Worst Forms of Child Labour.

The participants recognized that the problem of exploitation of child labour posed a serious threat to the development of the society and that the TBP should be integrated with other existing programmes that are currently underway in the districts.

"The five consultative meetings will give us a clear picture on types of child labour prevalent in the country and how we should go about with our programme," said Yadav Amatya, National Programme Manager, IPEC.

The ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention No. 182 is expected to be presented to the on-going session of Parliament for ratification. The workshop made an attempt to find ways of convergence of services, networking with the NGOs and capacity building of the partners.

Earlier addressing the inaugural session of the workshop, Leyla Tegmo-Reddy, Director, ILO emphasized on the need to put special focus on the girlchild, adding, "the success of TBP depends on how best we tackle the problem of intra-and inter-country trafficking of children in the country." She also informed that ILO is holding a workshop devoted to gender issues and child labour in the first week of March in order to seek their suggestions in the fight against child labour in the country.

"We need to formulate the programmes not only to address the problem of child labour but also to address socio-economic situation of the country," said Ramesh Chandra Poudel, Mayor, Biratnagar Sub-metropolis.

Nepal is one of the three pilot countries to implement the TBP on the elimination of worst forms of child labour. The other two countries are El Salvador from South America and Tanzania from Africa.

6,000 children die of various diseases in Parsa

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BIRGUNJ, Feb 27 - A total of 6,362 children aged up to 16 years died of different diseases in Parsa district over the past one year. Of them, 3,639 were boys and 2,729 girls.

This is mentioned in Children’s Survey Analysis, a booklet published here on Tuesday with the assistance of Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare and Save the Children Programme, Norway.

However, diseases which killed the children are not mentioned in the booklet.

According to the survey booklet, 76 percent of the boys and 52 percent of the girls in Parsa district go to school. In all, 680 boys and 387 girls are orphans in the district.

Similarly, the tendency of child marriage is conspicuous in the district. The survey states that 1,505 boys and 1,377 girls aged below 16 years got married during the past one year period.

Seventy-seven percent of the children visit health posts, eight percent seek help from traditional faith healers and 15 percent depend on household remedy in Parsa district, according to the survey.

In the same way, 186 boys and 64 girls are mentally retarded while the disabled children number 1,219 boys and 540 girls. The school-going children constitute 76 percent boys and 52 percent girls.

The total population of the 82 VDCs and one sub-metropolitan city in Parsa distirct is 449 735, with nearly 50 percent of children aged below 16 years, the survey states.

This is the detailed statistics of every ward of all the VDCs and the sub-metropolitan city and the survey work was completed in one year period.

Passengers stranded in Ramechhap airport

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MANTHALI, Feb 27 - Many passengers have been stranded in Ramechhap airport after the RNAC’s Kathmandu-Ramechhap flights were not operated for the last ten days.

RNAC operates three flights a week between Kathmandu and Ramechhap on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.

Not only are the regular flights not operated but delay schedule flights are also not sent to Ramechhap after the announcement of such flights. Passengers,therefore, come to the airport, wait for the whole day and return home disappointed.

Most of the patients travelling from Ramechhap to Kathmanu are women, disabled and sick people. They are therefore experiencing great inconvenience after the flights were not operated for 10 days, Ramesh Mahat of Civil Aviation Office said.

Since the road facility is available only up to the district headquarters, most of the passengers have to walk to reach the airport. The majority of them are angry because they walk to the airport with bags and baggages in the morning and return home in the evening by the same route and carrying the same bags.

A resident of Manthali, poet Bharat Raj Sharma Manthaliya said, "RNAC has not treated us as passengers."

The condition of patients waiting for the flights to go to Kathmandu for treatment is worsening. Similarly, other people who are staying at the hotels in the process of waiting for Kathmandu flights, are also short of money. No other airline has operated flights to Ramechhap except RNAC.

Cash crops farming yields fruit

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BHIMTAR, Sindhupalchok, Feb 27 - Living standard of the ethnic fishermen and Danuwar communities living on the banks of the snow-fed Indarwati river has improved after they took up commercial agriculture farming over the last couple of years.

Before they ventured in the new profession, their sources of income was to fish in the river and plant sugarcane on the land near the river banks.

They discarded the traditional occupation of fishing once they were provided with irrigation facilities to their land.

Gyan Bahadur Danuwar from the Bhimtar VDC says that his standard of living gradually improved after he started growing cereal crops, vegetables and oil seeds.

Majority of the population in this VDC is settled by the ethnic Danuwar community, whose traditional occupation was to fish in the river, which was hardly enough to support their livelihood.

VDC Vice-Chairman, Purna Bahadur Danuwar, says that people with a piece of land can lead a comfortable lifestyle by adapting to modern agriculture and livestock rearing.

A local Lal Bahadur Danuwar says that he earns more than Rs 40,000 a year from the sale of mustard seed. But all is not good for those living on the river banks. Farmers are worried about the cutting of their land by the river during the monsoon.

They want the government to protect their land from the river cutting.

Serious errors detected in voters’ ID cards

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TULSIPUR, Dang, Feb 27 - More than 60,000 voters will be deprived of their franchise right due to serious flaws in the voter Identity Cards (ID) distribution process. The Elections Commission has started distributing the IDs in the Constituency No-2 and 4 of the district beginning this year with a view to ensuring the systematic elections.

Of the total eligible voters from the Constituency-4, only one thousand IDs are flawless and the rest of the others are full of errors, Administrative Officer in the District Administration Office in Dang Hari Pyakurel said.

Pyakurel said that those errors were detected while going through a random verification out of the total 13,000 IDs handed over to the District Administration Office so far by the Kathmandu-based Mani Offset Press, a sole agent authorised to take photographs of the voters.

The District Administration Office said that another arrangement would be made to take photographs of those voters whose IDs had serious errors.

But the administration did not specify the date for the photographs to be taken in future. A total of 54,000 eligible voters from the two Constituencies combined were left to have their photographs taken during the first phase.

Many IDs received at his office have been found errors, particularly in their name, location and sex, Pyakurel said.

The Election Commission has envisaged to distribute IDs to the voters from all 205 Parliamentary Constituencies from across the Kingdom by end of 2003/4.

Meanwhile, a report from Saptari district stated that voters at Bathnaha VDC-6 beat VDC secretary, Dev Naryan Yadav, when they did not find their names at the time of taking their photographs. The IDs are distributed to the voters only after their names are included in the voters’ lists.

Civic education problems discussed

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KATHMANDU, Feb 27 -  Education experts today disclosed that children can be made aware about democracy with the help of school education without political influence. This view was expressed at a workshop programme on Civic Education Problems and Challenges organised by the Civic Education Promotion Society today.

Addressing the function chief advisor of the society DamanNath Dhungane said, "Today politics is known as a dirty game andtherefore it is our responsibility to teach children that politics is to serve the society from the root level."

He said, "Education and Civil society are disconnected and thus unity between the two is necessary." ,adding the need of long-term policy for the same.

According to Harsha Narayan Dhawmadel, "As an example one school should be used for generating awareness among children." He remarked, " If the plan works, others will also adopt this idea."

Discussions were focused on : problems ofcivic education, ways to develop civic educationand its effects on schooleducation.

Educationists Dr TirthaKhaniya, DrMan Prasad Wagle, Dr Ballabmani Dahal andTrailokya Nath Upreti also expressed their views at the workshop.